Staffing costs relating to import duty and import GST (FOI)

​Request

Please can you set out, for each of the last three financial years, a reasonable estimate of the amount of taxpayers’ funds which have been consumed on employing citizens in order to collect import duty and import GST on goods Imported into Jersey from:

• the United States of America 
• countries other than the UK, the other Crown dependencies and those which are members of the European Union

Response

The same staff within Jersey Customs and Immigration Service collect import GST, customs duties, excise duties and Vehicle Emissions Duty regardless of where the goods come from. They also administer a wide variety of other customs processes and procedures. It is not possible to proportion out the time they specifically spend on collecting customs duty and import GST from third countries. Jersey Customs and Immigration Service does not discriminate the taxes in such a way that this information is obtainable. Therefore, the information requested is not held as per Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.